Bear Taylor 
RIPPLE SALVO… #789… ON 3 MAY 1968 THE NEW YORK TIMES USED FOUR FULL PAGES (31-34) TO CARRY THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE TO AMERICA, NORTH VIETNAM AND THE WORLD: “Is the war over? No! We, Presidents of Student Government and Editors of campus newspapers at more than 500 American colleges, believe that we should not be forced to fight in the Vietnam war because the Vietnam war is unjust and immoral.”… The names of all five hundred of the young draft age college leaders, and their colleges or universities, were spread over the four pages… The message was made loud and clear on all four pages in big, bold print… “THE VIETNAM WAR IS UNJUST AND IMMORAL”… And more: the words of a half-dozen of America’s most famous… but first…
GOOD MORNING: Day SEVEN HUNDRED EIGHTY-NINE of a remembrance of the years, events and participants of the air war called Rolling Thunder…
3 MAY 1968… HEAD LINES from THE NEW YORK TIMES on Friday, 3 May 1968… a day from fifty years ago…
THE WAR: Page 1: “ENEMY ROUTE CUT BY ALLIED SWEEP IN A SHAU VALLEY–Drive On Supply Base Held Successful So Far–Helicopter Loss Heavy–Casualties Are Increasing In Fight Near DMZ–Terror Blast in Saigon Kills Three”… “The United States Command, breaking four day silence on the massive sweep in A Shau Valley, said today that the assault had cut off a major infiltration route for the North Vietnamese. ‘Right now we are sitting right on their supply lines for everything south of the Khe Sanh and Dong Ha areas,’ said Lieut. Gen. Robert Cushman of the Marines, the commander of United States forces in the critical northern provinces ‘The valley is not a fortress but almost a highway for logistics,’ the general said to a news conference in Danang.”… “A terrorist bomb exploded in central Saigon Friday afternoon, killing at least three persons and injuring eleven.”… FOE GAINS NEAR DONGHA… “Near Dongha, counterattacking North Vietnamese troops forced allied soldiers to give some ground…In Saigon Brig. Gen. Winant Sidle, chief of information for the United States Command said, ‘The drive to clear the Ashau has been successful so far. There’s an awful lot of stuff in there and we’re going to find it.’ Although ground action in the lush valley has been sporadic since the assault began on April 19. American casualties have mounted steadily. From April 19 to April 30 there were 63 American killed and 363 wounded. The official estimate of enemy death toll is 377. COPTER LOSSES HIGH… “The number of allied helicopters destroyed or damaged is unusually high . On the first day of the operation 10 helicopters were shot down by antiaircraft fire. Since then a total of 50 are believed to have been destroyed or damaged by North Vietnamese gunners hidden in the valley’s ridges.”… Page 1: “U.S. NOT SURE HANOI WANTS TO SLOW PACE OF FIGHTING”… “President Johnson and his senior advisors have come through a month of diplomatic dickering with North Vietnam with no clear idea whether Hanoi is interested in their basic proposition that the two sides move toward negotiations by reducing the level of fighting. Such movement toward restraint was the most that they hoped for when the President curtailed the bombing of North Vietnam and invited Hanoi to help save lives while contacts were made. The response so far, officials report, strikes the Administrative as inconclusive.”… Page 8: “AIR GUARD GROUP GOING TO VIETNAM–Fighter Squadron Activated in Pueblo Crisis on Way”… “An Air National Guard tactical fighter squadron, called to active duty during the Pueblo crisis, has been sent to South Vietnam… The approximately 25 F-100C Super Sabres of the 120th Tactical Fighter Squadron left the squadron’s home base at Buckley field near Denver on Monday.”…
Page 1: “COLUMBIA STUDY A CRISIS ORDERED BY FACULTY UNIT–12 MAN COMMITTEE TO NAME A FACT-FINDING PANEL HEADED BY OUTSIDER–Police Leave Campus–Atmosphere Grows Calmer–Some Classes To Open But Strike Continues”… Page 1: “MARCH OF THE POOR SETS OUT FROM MEMPHIS”… Page 25: “BILLS IN CONGRESS SPEEDED TO CHECK POOR PEOPLE’S CAMPAIGN–Hearings Will Open in House Monday On 30 Proposals, All From Southerners”… Page 1: “ROCKEFELLER BACKS DRAFT LOTTERY–Tells Iowa Students Present System Is Unfair Urges Vote For 18 Year-Olds”… Page 26: “Nixon Gives Plan For Ailing Slums”… Page 27: “HUMPHREY VOWS COMMITMENT TO HUMAN RIGHTS–Tells Negro Church Session That Equality and Peace Are The Central Issues”… Page 1: “McCarthy Leads Poll At Colleges”… Page 28: “INDIANA SEEING A NEW KENNEDY–Shorter Hair, Calm Manner and Pleas For Local Rule”… Page 29: “Humphrey Clouds Race In Nebraska–Showdown Of Kennedy and McCarthy Is Blurred”… Page 29: “REAGAN RELEASES POSITION PAPER –20-PAGE BROCHURE ‘HUMAN RELATIONS’ …”…
3 MAY 1968… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER…New York Times (4 May reporting 3 May ops)…Page 1: “A United States military spokesman said that bombs from the Air Force planes had set off 12 explosions on the ground and that black smoke swirled 7,000-feet into the air as the fuel burned.”… “Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chris Hobson) There were two fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 2/3 May 1968…
(1) CAPTAIN STEPHEN WILLIAM CLARK, USMC was flying an F-8E of the VMF(AW)-235 “Death Angels” and MAG-11 out of Danang was scrambled to provide close air support for troops fighting just south of the DMZ about eight miles northeast of Dong Ha and was downed on his first strafing pass on enemy troops in the open. The ground fire was observed to hit the cockpit area and CAPTAIN CLARK did not escape the aircraft before it crashed. He perished fifty years ago today and rests where he fell, He is listed as “killed in action, body not recovered” …
(2) 1LT ROBERT D. AVERY, USMC and 1LT THOMAS D. CLEM, USMC were flying an A-6A of the VMA(AW)-533 and MAG-12 out of Chu Lai on an early morning strike on vehicles reported five miles northwest of Dong Hoi in Route Pack I. Radar contact was lost and no beeper or voice calls were heard to indicate that either of the young marines were able to survive the crash. It was assumed that they were downed by ground fire near the target. The following is quoted from an internet source…
“In the early 190’s, U.S. teams reviewing archival documents in Vietnam came across three documents related to Lieutenants Clem and Avery.
(1) A Bo Trach District, South Vietnam, archival document listed the downing of an A-6A on May 3, 1968 in which both crewmen died.
(2) A Military Region IV Museum (Vinh City) archival list of gravesites of Americans who died there during the war listed Robert D. Avery as buried there in Qung Ninh District from an F-105 downed on April 15, 1968; Col D.W. Winn safely ejected over water and was rescued, while Major James H. Metz died in captivity,
(3) Another Military Region IV Museum air defense record listed an A-6A downed on My 3, 1968 with both crewmen dead. … On Tuesday, July 2, 2002, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that the wreckage of Avery’s (and Clem’s) A-6A had been found during the search for another downed aircraft: ‘In 1995, nearly three decades after Avery’s plane disappeared, a joint U.S.-Vietnamese team was probing the coast of Vietnam for another airplane, part of a continuing effort to locate unaccounted for veterans. On a narrow, sandy plain near a row of scrub pines, they found a brackish water filled crater they would later confirm as the crash site of an A-6A. The pilot of that plane was Lt. Thomas Dean Clem. His friend and crew mate was Robert Douglas Avery.’ The POW Network post adds: ‘We know we had the right aircraft. We found personal effects. We found crew materials. We found human remains but they have no DNA potential.’…. Unfortunately, the latest status sheets on the two marines holds them as presumed killed in action, body not found…
On this 50th anniversary of the last flights of these three Marines who rest in peace where they fell, glory gained, duty done– they are remembered …
RIPPLE SALVO… #789… The four page ad– “THE VIETNAM WAR IS UNJUST AND IMMORAL”… To add some cover to their public plea for immunity from the draft, these campus folks, who thought they “should not be forced to fight in the Vietnam war,” the ad includes the following quotes in large letters:
REVEREND MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., February 1968: “The war we re fighting is unjust and immoral…The bombs that fall in Vietnam explode in the United States.”…
PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY… “We must remember that it is their war, not ours. It is their country, not ours… We cannot always impose our will on the 94 per cent of mankind.”…
HONORABLE MARRINER R. ECCLES. Former Chairman, Federal Reserve Board, September 1967: “How can we reconcile what we re doing to the South Vietnamese under the guise of saving them from Communis? We have killed, wounded or burned more than one million children…No wonder the great majority of the people do not consider us their savior, but hate us and want us to get out of their country.”…
WALTER LIPPMAN, Dean of American Political Analysts, January 1968: “There is a growing sense of guilt. The American people are becoming revolted and ashamed by the spectacle of themselves engaged in a war where big, rich, super-armed giant trying to beat the life out of a dwarf. This is the most unpopular war in American history. It is also the war which most deeply affronts the American conscience.”…
SENATOR ALBERT GORE (Tenn.), Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, February 1968: “We are destroying the country we profess to be saving. We are damaging our relations with most other nations of the world. We are destroying any basis for cooperation with the two other major powers on whom the future of world peace depends–the Soviet Union and China.”…
GENERAL DAVID M. SHOUP, Retire Commandant, United States Marine Corps, December 1967: “We’ve told semi-truths and lies to our youthful people for so long that they’re finally revolting and want the truth.”…
RTR quote for 3 May: GEORGE WASHINGTON: “It may be laid down as a primary position and the basis of our system, that every citizen who enjoys the protection of a free government owes not only a portion of his property, but even of his personal services in defense of it.”…
Lest we forget… Bear
